The British director with a string of international hits will succeed Andrew Upton from 2016.

Sydney Theatre Company has appointed Jonathan Church as its new Artistic Director to succeed Andrew Upton from 2016. The 48-year-old transformational British powerhouse, with an address book that must read like a who’s who of the theatrical great and the good, is outgoing Artistic Director of Chichester Festival Theatre where he has produced a string of hits that have travelled the globe since he took over in 2006. He was considered by many as a likely candidate to take over from Nicholas Hytner at the National Theatre, a  job that eventually went to Rufus Norris.

^{Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood in Chichester’s Macbeth}

Shows like Rupert Goold’s award-winning production of Lucy Prebble’s play Enron, David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, which starred Rupert Everett and was directed by Neil Armfield, and a ‘Stalinist’ Macbeth with Patrick Stewart have been resounding box-office successes in the UK and on Broadway. Church is also a keen musical theatre fan, as shown most notably in an acclaimed Sweeney Todd with Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton. The latter has...